


A Study in Doubles

by Ark



Category: Burn Notice, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Crossover, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-27
Updated: 2011-05-27
Packaged: 2017-10-19 20:16:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/204794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ark/pseuds/Ark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The resemblance is uncanny, really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Study in Doubles

Sam had told Michael some good old army buddies would be stopping by, so Michael isn't surprised by the sound of voices behind the loft door.

He lets himself in. There's already an empty six-pack open on the kitchen counter and more scattered bottles besides.

He likes Sam's friends, as a rule, since they tend to be either like Sam or Michael himself. Something easy and familiar to fall back into, that instinctive military camaraderie.

It was generally good times, with Sam particularly happy, when old servicemen got together. They had the best drinking songs, although Fiona would strenuously protest on behalf of Ireland.

Michael sees Sam and his friends close by inside. Sam has a beer in hand and a wild story growing wilder in the telling.

The two men listening look up and raise beer-holding hands to Michael in greeting.

Three things happen very fast.

Firstly, Michael's gun is pulled, the safety off, and he holds the barrel flush against the temple of the man nearest to him. His hand is unwavering; his finger tests the weight of the trigger.

Secondly, Sam says, “Mikey, the _fuck_ \--”

Thirdly, a half-second after the introduction of Michael's gun, the man next to Sam has his own drawn. He aims dead-center at Michael's forehead, and his grip is as steady as Michael's. It looks like his aim will be good.

They make for an tense triangle.

Sam is at its apex, trying not to drop his beer, jaw already dropped, trying to watch all of them at once.

“Put it down,” the other man with the gun says. He has a gravelly voice that knows humor but is icily devoid of it now.

He has a voice used to commanding authority and issuing commands. “Axe says you're good, Westen. But I'm better.”

Michael has always had a certain problem conforming to authority. It's in his file.

His gun-hand stays straight. Sam is as close to freaking out as Michael's ever seen, from what he can see out of the corner of his eye.

Michael ignores Sam and the man with the sink-your-battleship voice and keeps his attention on the one under his gun.

The man'd blinked at first, looking astonished behind round glasses. But now he stood, calmly unmoving, like having weapons aimed at his face was a not-infrequent occurrence.

“Mike,” Sam says, ducking double-barrels, “I don't know what the hell has gotten into you, but put it down. If this is a funny game it isn't.”

“Sam,” Michael replies, not transferring his gaze, “Look at him.”

Michael speaks next to the silver-haired man whose kill-ready stance hasn't moved a centimeter since Michael did. “You claim to know this person?”

“More than a decade, and little too well,” the man answers, bone-dry, aim resolute. “He doesn't stop talking easily. Go ahead, ask him something about Mesopotamia or some other ancient crap. Put down the gun and ask him.”

“Holy shit,” Sam says, realizing after a squinting delay. “It really is uncanny. But Mike--”

The man in front of Michael speaks up for the first time. “If I may--”

“Not now, Daniel. Junior is gonna put it down, and we're all gonna have a nice chat without any lead in it, OK?”

Sam says, “I'm sorry, Mike. I would have warned you. Danny here looked quite a bit different last I saw him. They've been putting him through his paces out in Colorado, I guess. These are the buddies I mentioned -- General Jack O'Neill's the one who's going to kill you quickly if you keep pushing it, and the man you're putting the fear of God into in his colleague Dr. Daniel Jackson.”

“Hello,” Daniel says, still smartly unmoving. “Actually on the subject of Gods, well -- that's neither here nor there. I think you may have me mistaken for someone else, unless you're one of those reviewers who really took issue with my last book. Some _have_ been a bit upset.”

Any good spy worth his weight in sweat who wanted into deep undercover operations had to be by nature a gifted actor. Some things couldn't be learned. It was why some spies were in the field while others rode desks and pushed paper.

Languages and pitch-perfect accents needed to be amassed. Facial tics practiced and perfected. Endless, never-ending hours of regional movies and videos and profiles studied.

A different way of holding or hunching a shoulder, retweezing an eyebrow, being able to flare nostrils on cue could create the near-perfect effect of playing another person.

But there are limits to even the finest spy's performance. And the way this man's eyes had widened with surprise at Michael's gun, then the quick dilation of pupil that accompanied natural uncertainty when there's a firearm an inch from your brain -- Michael can process that he is something else entirely, even if he has Victor's face.

Michael lowers the gun, though his heart-rate won't go down. “My mistake,” he tells the room. He tells the man with Victor's face, “You look very like a person that I knew.”

“Bad guy?” Daniel guesses.

“Dead guy.” Michael tucks his piece away.

The other man, Jack, finally does the same after a moment's hesitation. Sam sighs loud enough to be heard in Orlando.

“This is the famous Floridian hospitality I was promised, Axe?” Jack says. His tone is slightly less obey-or-die than in had been, he be still sounds deeply unamused.

“Jack,” Sam soothes, “Daniel. Sorry about that. Mike had a situation a little while back -- it got hairy -- and Daniel really does look the part. Take away the glasses and put him in a colored Hawaiian shirt chosen by the colorblind, and you've got Victor. He was a bad guy, kinda, until he wasn't.”

Daniel looks brightly interested at these proceedings. He looks the type to be brightly interested in most things, even the introduction of a gun to his head.

Looking at Daniel is the most bizarre thing Michael's ever seen in a life of extremely bizarre things. The two men were identical as twins -- even their voices had a similar cant. But these are different people.

Daniel Jackson's eyes are warm and intelligent where Victor's had held manic energy and hard-won brutal intelligence. Daniel's eyes are Victor's, if Victor had veered sideways in life and become an academic and stayed sane.

That’s his initial read of the other man once the weapons are down. Michael's brain had started like a kicked beehive when he turned to see a form of Victor standing drinking with Sam and his buddy, but now it settles to a low buzz.

“Let's try this again,” Sam says over-loudly and over-cheerfully, “Jack, Daniel, Michael Westen. Mikey's my best buddy going back for years. More than ten years now, starting in my early twenties.”

Jack relents into a grin at that -- he's a tough nut to crack, this man, Michael sees, battle-roughened, wary and weary, made cynical by having seen far too much shit go down (Michael knows the type) -- but there's also a deep vein of playful amusement, of greater depth than the commando front.

Before long he and Sam are cracking wise again and again and cracking open more beers.

Daniel Jackson is looking at Michael with the same steady pursuit of curiosity. He's some kind of doctor, Sam'd said, while Michael wasn't quite listening and was looking at the way that Daniel nearly had Victor's broad shoulder-span exactly.

Since Michael has never enjoyed the feeling of being dissected, no matter how cleverly or politely, he meets Daniel's -- not Victor's -- eyes head on.

“Sorry about that wrong foot,” he says, close enough to a proper apology.

“Just glad it didn't get shot off,” Daniel answers easily enough. “Don't worry about it. Jack and I have see some pretty odd things, Michael -- may I call you Michael? -- and we're hard to spook these days. That was a good draw, though. Jack'll deny it, but I think you could've gotten me before he got you -- which is impressive to say the least.”

“Hey,” Jack barks right on time from the counter, “There's no way in hell that--”

“Anyway,” Daniel transitions smoothly, with the skill and smoother voice of someone long used to peacemaking and negotiation, and negotiating Jack, “Now that that's that, won't you have a beer?”

Daniel passes over a cold bottle.

His fingers are like Victor's and not: not so neatly groomed, with dirt under his short nails like he spent a lot of time in dirt. There are calluses on his palms from gripping a gun, but the calluses on Daniel look reluctant, just the essentials, not the grooves of a fine and eager marksman. That he's had some combat training is evident enough; Michael hasn't seen many professors with the arms and abs Daniel's thin t-shirt outlines.

Michael looks from Daniel to Jack and back again. Impossible not to retrain his eyes on Daniel, though it's also something akin to painful, and still feels too improbable. “Sam said you guys were...Air Force?” he says, half a dangled question.

Jack can be read as career military a mile away, but the man with Victor's lips is some kind of civilian-scholar-soldier with high clearance, as odd a hybrid as Michael’s encountered.

“Well, it's--” Daniel starts.

“Classified,” Jack O'Neill finishes from under a long pull of beer. “I'm sure you understand, Westen.”

“Of course,” Michael answers, and does understand. When a man who holds a weapon like that and has a bearing like that says classified you didn't push it further right then.

Michael will have to tie up Sam later and torture him until he gives up more of the goods on their guests.

Sam, sensing Michael's mood already, gives a kind of hey-don't-look-at-me-yet sort of shrug.

So Michael shrugs too, and shows his most settling smile. “Simpler topics, then. Greetings. Welcome to Miami. Have you been before?”

Jack had, years ago to tour the Naval bases, and that got him started on a round of old stomping-ground stories with Sam.

When at ease, Jack has a bold sharp swagger and a warmly sarcastic laugh. Michael can see how he could be more likable than scary.

Michael and Daniel look at their chattering friends with some relief, then at each other. Mostly Michael looks at Daniel.

Jack wants to see if an old favorite bar is still open, and looking into favorite bars is Sam's preferred activity.

Only Daniel doesn’t much look the drinking type. Michael rather thinks he might prefer a yogurt. He nearly offers him one.

Instead, Michael offers to show Daniel his favorite stretch of Miami coast, away from the tourist-hordes that lurk everywhere else. This is Daniel’s first time in the city.

For a moment it looks like Jack or Sam will object, but then they don't because Daniel says, “Thank you, Michael. I'd like that very much,” and then it's all decided as though there hadn't been guns in the air thirty minutes before.

The door closes behind the two old buddies, who are prepped for such an epic night of alcohol consumption that Sam's already engaged a personal cab.

The door closes, and Michael and Daniel don't go to the beach.

“It's okay,” Daniel says, gently. “I don't mind, Michael.”

So Michael gives in and goes closer for an even closer look.

“I really don't,” Daniel assures, with the near-psychic empathy of a personality type long used to thinking about others before himself. He definitely isn't Victor, even if his neck curves precisely like Victor's had.

Michael gazes his full now, unabashedly and in full-on investigatory mode. He stands close with Daniel before him, and at Daniel's nod tilts his chin up with one hand. He makes a study of Daniel.

There are no tell-tale scars or signs of plastic surgery on Daniel's skin, and though the round of his ear is quite like Victor's it is not.

Daniel has healed marks and lines that Victor did not have, faded, almost-invisible places that evince past blows to the head, strikes to the face. There is evidence of torture.

He feels abruptly angry that this good-spirited man should have seen so much maltreatment and then simply confused.

“Who are you?” Michael asks. Daniel is as puzzling as Victor was, even more so, since Victor had been like Michael in too many ways and Michael had understood him, mostly. “What are you?”

“That's a very long and very classified story,” Daniel says, with some regret. “I'm sorry. I do wish I could tell you it.”

Michael indicates with a small shrug that he quite understands. It doesn’t really matter, anyway, not now. When he takes his hands away from inspection he doesn't mean to let his fingers brush Daniel's jawline, but the urge is overwhelming, completely beyond his control.

Stubble under his fingertips, Victor's face looking back at him doing it.

“Did you know,” Daniel says, “That many cultures have the tradition of a physical double? It isn’t so rare as you might think. The concept of a doppelgänger is the most commonly known of course, but there are countless tales across societies, going back to time immemorial, that--”

“Maybe I knew that,” Michael says, moving closer.

“Did you know,” Daniel says, not moving, “It’s generally considered to be a bad portent -- the doppelgänger is a more evil other; and seeing one’s own is often thought to indicate death. But I mean, not always. The Talmud argues quite the opposite, certainly, and the Egyptians and the Norse, for example, believed--”

“Victor already died,” Michael says, drinking in the false reflection of Victor alive before him, watching Daniel’s mouth make words.

He dares to touch him again, convinced this mirror-Victor will waver and vanish like a dream, like the spirit-doubles Daniel had been describing. “I don’t think he would have minded the description of ‘evil other’ towards the end; he didn’t have much to live for. Maybe he was your doppelgänger, Daniel, and you can be assured now that you won’t run into him.”

Daniel looks back with the same calm regard and open, intrigued expression, considerate and considering. He doesn't flinch. He doesn't deny or discourage Michael, so Michael dares to let his thumb dip in against Daniel's lower lip.

Then he drops his hand and starts to move back, ashamed at the overindulgence, at the loss of self-restraint.

Daniel's careful but firm fingers on his wrist. “This man I look like,” he says. “Did he know what you felt?”

Michael hesitates. He’s glad Daniel chose that phrasing. He closes his eyes for only a brief flicker of dark so that he can pretend the warm pressure of the hand is someone else's.

Then he opens his eyes and acknowledges it. “We hadn't really the time,” he says, which is mostly the truth.

Maybe Victor had known. Probably Victor had known.

“The way you looked at me when you first came in,” Daniel ventures. “I've never see anything like it. Surprise and fear, then anger, confusion, then hope so wrenching I wished for your sake that I was him.”

Michael wants to step back but can't. This man with Victor's defined cheekbones and another mind entirely can still read him too easily.

He deflects that reading back, gentling it, since Daniel has been so gentle with him. “That General of yours,” he says, “Do you know what _he_ feels? I've had a lot of guns aimed at me in my life, Daniel, but it's always different when there's someone really important at stake. His instinct to protect you was--”

“Jack is complicated.” Daniel says it calmly. He doesn't turn away from Michael's words or look surprised at the implication; only his eyes show some shadow. “Jack and I are. It’ll be some years before we can have that conversation.”

“More's the pity for him,” Michael says. “He's not stupid. He can see how you look back at him.”

“And you,” Daniel says, changing the subject, “Look at me like you want to eat me alive, starting place negotiable.”

“Sorry about that,” Michael says, and feels sorry.

It's unfair to Daniel that whenever his tongue wets his lips Michael has to curb the dangerous urge to slam Daniel into the wall. Michael is usually more graciously behaved around near-strangers.

“No apologies necessary. It's really quite fascinating -- I've never been looked at with lust-filled love-hate, or maybe it's hate-filled love-lust, before. I think. Well, I guess if I were to think about it--”

“You are very unlike him,” Michael says, “But both of you seem prone to talking.”

“There are ways to make me quiet,” Daniel says. The offer is as generously made as the rest of his generous demeanor.

Michael expels a sharp breath. He's no angel, and it's a proposition to tempt a saint. Daniel is meeting his eyes, Daniel’s blue eyes, shy but confident, understanding and interested. Whether it's for the sake of science or social studies, Michael doesn't give a damn.

“That doesn't seem like a fair bargain,” he says at last. He wrenches it out. Daniel's fingers are still circling his wrist, and they stand too close together. Too easy for Michael to complete his mind's imagining and pin Daniel up against the wall.

Daniel lifts his eyebrows. “No?”

“No.” Even so, Michael can't resist reaching up to touch Daniel's face again, a face he never thought he'd see again, and feel the softness of skin and the rough scratch of unshaven hours. “You know I would be thinking of someone else.”

“It takes two,” Daniel says. That Michael's hyper-focused intensity arouses him is evident, and he leans his head slightly to deepen the caress. “Let's make the bargain fully fair.”

“I'm listening.” Michael is, sort of. Michael threads his fingers through Daniel's hair. This might be what it might have felt like to touch Victor in this way, an echo of it, but delicious nonetheless. The lengths of their hair-cuts are a little different, but Daniel is silky under his fingertips, as Victor might have been.

“Sam told us you're at your best undercover -- that you have ‘a real knack for it,’ I think he said. That you can assume identities and mimic people.” Daniel's breath is starting to hitch; he shifts closer into Michael's space. The clean soap-and-shampoo scent of him is different than Victor, but teases Michael's nose nonetheless. “Sam says you're one of the best. You can be anyone.”

“I don't suck,” Michael modestly allows.

“How's your Air Force General?” Daniel asks.

He only hesitates a little on the last word, and Michael moves before he’s done with the saying of it.

In bed with Dr. Daniel Jackson is strange and wonderful theater.

Michael has bedded people as other people for jobs in his career, but this is the first time the play-act is exquisitely consensual and goes both ways.

When he lets himself think about it, Michael imagines that being with Victor would have been a constant game: each keen to one-up the other, each excited by the same desires that drove men like them.

They would have torn each other apart and liked it.

Daniel isn’t Victor and won’t be treated as such. Michael is more cautious and more tame than he would have been with Victor, though Daniel has asked for something else.

He doesn’t imitate General Jack O’Neill for Daniel. That’s not what Daniel wants.

Not fake-Jack, just a man who acts very much like Jack might, who is familiar enough to the ideal to serve as a needful substitution.

To be able to close one’s eyes and for a moment be convinced that they were with someone else.

Michael rather understands this. He started it. So he relishes the role.

He’s known and had to deal with enough top military brass in his time that he could play the part blindfolded. Generals of all stripes were an odd breed -- the old racehorses who fought it through to the bitter end.

He affects the easy confident bravado they ooze. The hard flat voice with its ever-present push of authoritarian command. The ramrod posture of a person so steeped in decades of strict tradition that ‘at ease’ is no longer their default.

He is gruff yet affectionate with Daniel, sometimes roughly taking, sometimes reassuring.

He issues orders that Daniel is all too quick to comply with, and it’s evident that the yearning in Daniel responds well to Michael’s commanding presence and performance.

The yearning in Michael is somewhat quieted because a man with Victor’s enviable frame and face lies naked in his bed. Too much to ever hope for, too much to have imagined.

That Daniel is a finely accomplished man whom Michael likes regardless and they’re on the same page about this is too good to be true.

Michael orders himself to shut up with the self-loathing thing for maybe an hour at least and orders Daniel onto his knees.

Daniel seems to instinctively understand that on his flip-side of the bargain, the less he speaks, the more the illusion can be complete for Michael. He is perfectly silent as he sets about executing the tasks that Michael describes. His movements are thoughtful and elegant.

He knows that the sight of him doing these things is what Michael wants.

Daniel and Victor have the same basic proportions, but Daniel’s body is less aggressively built in small, infinitesimal ways. Michael doesn’t know if Daniel’s long impressive cock is identical to Victor’s, or the well-made bare thighs, muscled like he has to run a lot on the job.

When Daniel takes off his glasses and puts them aside, another barrier between realities is blurred and his face is almost nearly Victor’s exactly.

Victor seen through water. The same broad forehead, the same piercing blue eyes underneath dramatically expressive brows. Victor’s strong nose and full lips, especially the lower one. The triangular set of Victor’s chin that made his smile perpetually roguelike, the shadowy hint of stubble there.

Daniel says, softly, “I wish he could have seen the way you’re looking at me.” It’s the first time he’s spoken for a long space.

Michael bends down and kisses him. Daniel’s mouth and Victor’s.

Daniel is an excellent kisser -- has been excellent at everything so far, with the enthusiasm of a top student who has mastered many subjects. Most of the academics Michael has known have been of free-wheeling free-thinking stock, and Daniel is no exception.

Study the ancient world long enough, Michael supposes, and you lose any prudishness to native fertility rituals. The classics-types were always kinky, anyway.

Kissing Victor would have been a thrown gauntlet, an invitation to a battle-ground. Kissing Daniel is very different, but Michael kisses hard and hungrily enough for both men to forget where and who they are in the struggle for breath and the slide of tongues.

When he finally lets Daniel up for air, Michael orders him, in a low growl that brokers no argument, to suck his cock.

Daniel ducks immediately to do so with impeccable and exotic ability -- where on Earth had he learned to do _that?_ \-- and his eyes, which are distractedly unlike Victor’s at their depths, are hidden.

Michael pretends. For a brief juncture he can let reality blur further and it is Victor who moves on him. Victor taking him into his mouth, Victor’s lips a splendid ‘O’. It’s the strangest and best game of make-believe he’s ever played.

At least their shared desire is not affected. The attraction is real and heady. If he thought he was using Daniel alone Michael would not permit himself this. But Daniel wanted to use him back just as eagerly, and he used Michael extremely well.

Daniel looks a little surprised when Michael commands him to withdraw -- those eyebrows go up -- but he obeys, licking blood-flushed lips. Michael is tortuously at the edge just from the sight of it, let alone the feel of Daniel’s accomplished heat, but far from ready.

Daniel looks a little more surprised when Michael pushes him flat and goes to return the same favor.

When he makes as though to say something Michael snaps, “On your back and stay that way, Jackson,” and Daniel’s spine goes straight and then he follows orders again.

Michael takes his time about it, and it’s ironic, he thinks, the careful attention he gives to every detail of Daniel’s striking nakedness.

He would have been brusque and show-offy with Victor, at first; they would have been all business. Spy coupling spy had enormous potential but was always potentially explosive.

The appreciation and expertise he puts into his investigation of Daniel’s body would have taken a while to bring out with Victor. Even if they’d had more time together it would have been hard, at first, to let down their guards, their instinct at remaining guarded. It would have been some time before they could have been easy with one another.

In this he and Daniel understand each other well, and nothing about Daniel has indicated anything but safety and mutual sympathy. This is a good man, and he looks like the man Michael still sees when he closes his eyes, and Michael rewards him thoroughly for it.

He fucks Daniel face-up underneath him. Maybe he should have let Daniel turn over so that Daniel could more easily pretend that Michael was someone else, too.

But Daniel seems to understand that it’s critical for Michael to see his face in this. That the things Michael has just done to his cock and the exquisite torture of his body are due to his unique features, to Michael’s need to see the excited response writ there.

Daniel doesn’t seem to mind, so Michael fucks him slowly with his forehead pressed to Daniel’s.

Daniel had asked him to go slow at first, quietly said it had been a little while for him.

Michael thinks it’s maybe been years now of waiting for Jack O’Neill to make it official, and, starting to push harder into Daniel, he feels something like pity for Jack O’Neill and his rank.

But when Daniel’s ready, Michael fucks him like a General would.

He surges forward and onward in double-time. Daniel laid open and all-to-willing beneath him, the perfection of his limbs encompassing and encouraging Michael.

Daniel’s legs behind his back, Daniel taking in all of Michael’s significant campaigning, Daniel’s neck showing pale skin meant to be explored. Michael claims the territory on behalf of American forces.

Daniel stays quiet for Michael save for moans. When he closes his eyes to Michael’s relentless motion and then moves with him reality shifts around them and they’re with anyone they want to be with.

Michael is in prime physical condition, and he uses that effect in full. He thinks he could stay this hard and buried deep forever, fifty minutes at least, if it meant getting to look down at Daniel’s face looking like that.

Michael holds up easily on his forearms like a military man doing push-ups only the exercise at hand is thrusting into Daniel again and again. He makes it a perfectly executed maneuver.

Daniel reaches up to touch Michael, his shoulder, his back and buttocks, hesitant at first, then with bolder fingers. It should break the illusion but doesn’t: Victor would have been hungry to touch him, Michael thinks, though he would have grabbed. Victor had only ever looked at him with hunger.

Daniel’s need is also for someone else, but he’s a hands-on kind of guy, the hugging type. Difficult for him not to show overt physical affection, even if they’re playing make-believe and are almost-strangers. But he keeps his eyes closed for Michael’s sake while he touches him.

Michael realizes then that he’s gasping raggedly, forehead pressing back against Daniel’s, eyes open as wide as they’ll go.

Pushing himself too far, fucking them both to within an inch of life, to the place where waking life is uncertain and there is only mindless hot sweat-slick propulsion and indecipherable speech.

Desperate rutting in its most primal form. He’s clinging and panting and fucking Daniel, unable to let himself stop, and Daniel’s hands are soothing his shoulder-blades.

“It’s...okay, Michael,” Daniel murmurs, voice not unlike Victor’s because it is only a broken whisper. He’d said the same thing a little while ago after he’d seen how badly Michael needed to look at him. “You are...very...good...but you deny yourself. Take...take what you want -- dear _Gods_ \-- from me, and I’ll come with you.”

Not anything Victor would have said, Michael thinks, or maybe he would have. Michael kisses Daniel once more, more lingering, then says with his best tart smile, “Is that any way to speak to your commanding officer?”

Daniel’s returned smile is dazzling, infectious, and in the end they laugh and are lighter about it. Better maybe than Michael’s frightening intensity, Daniel’s tight-held eyelids, both of them too far away.

They finish it off as themselves, with Michael reaching between them to stroke Daniel’s cock, and Daniel keeping his sharp blue eyes opened and trained on them both, cheerfully observing as seemed to be his wont. They slow to a more even rhythm, a sensuous give and receive of bodies, a perfected sexual accord.

The small hairs on the back of Michael’s neck feel charged with electricity. Daniel’s gaze, meeting Michael’s head-on now, is electric. Gratification gathers and builds between them, threatens to break free.

He ensures that Daniel comes first with an aptitude learned over even more years of study than Daniel’s had, and just the right amount of balanced pressure with his hips and cock.

Daniel comes first so that Michael can watch his face while he comes, see what it looks like while it happens.

Daniel is heart-breakingly expressive at orgasm. Most men are quieter, but not Daniel. He doesn’t say Michael’s name, but he swears impressively on a string of deities Michael’s never heard of. His head goes back and his cock spreads warmth between them. His face is twisted with long-needed release, beautiful.

His body relaxes, is made even more supplicant to Michael, and Michael bites off and then chews on a groan as he finds he can push even further into Daniel. He gathers those muscular thighs, slips his hands under Daniel’s ass -- even Victor might have envied Daniel’s ass -- and pulls them flush together.

He puts his weight on Daniel and has Daniel take all of him, all that Michael can give. But it’s still the sight of Daniel below him, glowing with lustful satisfaction, that finally does Michael in.

One more look at the face underneath him, the strong body around his cock, and Michael loses it entirely. It feels like half of his brain explodes along with his dick, but in that way that was the best, a brain-melt of the highest order. Through it all he bites his lip so he doesn’t say anyone’s name and keeps his eyes on Daniel.

Daniel, heavy with afterglow, holds him through; rises to push Michael further over the brink with an encouraging tilt of his hips as he comes. Palms his hand down Michael’s back and lets it settle in the dip at the end of his spine. They breathe together.

It could be awkward, but it isn’t. They roll apart after a space; Michael finally acknowledges how hard his heart is racing from exertion. They lay still, content to bask in how good it was.

It had been _very_ good, and Michael is adept enough at reading body language to know Daniel felt the same way on the matter.

“Thank you,” he says to Daniel, staring at the ceiling, when he trusts himself to speak.

“Ditto,” says Daniel.

Daniel goes up on one arm. His hair is bed-sex-hair and will need to be smoothed down before Sam and Jack return. “You’re a tricky bit of an enigma, Michael Westen,” he says. “You will be glad to be rid of me. I quite like puzzles. I believe I would be tempted.”

“Many have tried,” Michael answers, not immodestly. “But I think it’s good that you will be gone, too. Good for General O’Neill, at least.”

“Not until Sunday evening,” Daniel says.

It’s Friday. Michael smiles.

When they’re cleaning up and dressing and righting the ruin of the bed, Michael says, “I think you should talk to Jack.”

Daniel freezes up only a little in the fluffing of a pillowcase. “I’ll take that under advisement, appreciate it, Michael,” he replies. His calm is both long-practiced and forced. In this topic only does his lyric voice go flat.

“Maybe sooner rather than later,” Michael says. He’s never been one for moralizing and has generally steered clear from advice-giving to avoid culpability, but in some situations he’s too much his mother’s son to keep his mouth shut.

“You never know what the universe’ll throw at you,” Michael says. “Just trust me, it’s better to know.”

Daniel nods, more introspection than momentum, and they tuck the sheets into perfect corners together.

They sit at the kitchen counter with two open beers practicing a vague story about how lovely the beach had been.

“And then I’ll just start describing the indigenous wildlife in detail, and a paleolithic sand-dune or something, and Jack will get bored and we’ll all drink some more,” Daniel says.

“You could’ve made for a good spy,” Michael says, then wishes he had not. Daniel wasn’t the kind of man like Victor and Michael were, able to shut off emotion when a job needed to be done. Daniel seems the kind of person who can never shut off.

Daniel touches the back of Michael’s hand. “If I’m going to be a grown-up about this, I think I have to insist on the same from you. I don’t know you very well, Michael, but I know you well enough now, and I can see how you keep yourself back. I think you deny yourself as a matter of course. You should live a little.”

Michael slants an eyebrow, and Daniel shrugs. “Yeah, I can see how that sounds ironic coming from me. But I can’t see how Sam doesn’t have you in a better mood at least. According to Jack, his prowess is legendary.”

Michael doesn’t have any beer in his mouth, so he doesn’t splutter. He says, “Sam? My Sam?”

“Precisely.” Daniel blinks smart knowing eyes at Michael, then rolls them. “Oh, come on, Michael. Aren’t you this -- this -- super-consulting-detective or something? With the best-buddy partner? Sam was fuzzy on the details. You can’t tell me you and Sam Axe--”

“Sam?” Michael says again. He thinks he might appear to have been hit by a two-by-four.

Daniel’s eyes go from knowing to really startled, somehow more surprised than when Michael had pointed a gun at his face. “Or -- not, then? I’m sorry, I just assumed -- the way he looks at you --”

“ _Sam_?” This is getting excessive, but Michael needs to be sure he’s understanding the name Daniel keeps saying.

“Sam.” Daniel volleys it again. No mistake. “Michael,” he teases, “I thought spies, let alone super-spies, were supposed to be observant.”

It’s hard to flabbergast Michael, but he sits flabbergasted.

Daniel laughs a little and says, “I think I’m not the only one who needs to have an important conversation,” and then he makes Michael take a big sip of beer so that he’ll stop staring.

By now Michael can look at Daniel and see Daniel and not just a shadow-form of Victor, though he’ll admit his eyes keep looking their fill until the door finally opens and Sam and Jack, drunk as drunk can be, tumble through.

They needn’t have planned the story about the beach and the wildlife; Jack and Sam could hardly care, are too far-gone, though Jack tells a dirty joke about flamingos.

Then he’s herding Daniel towards the door and the waiting taxi. Michael and Daniel shake hands with wry formality before Jack tugs him away.

“Thanks again,” Daniel says genuinely.

Michael hopes his best insta-smile isn’t as telling as he thinks it is. “The pleasure was all mine.”

Sam comes over and slings his arm around Michael’s shoulder. It’s the loose, casual embrace he’s given Michael a million times before.

Michael stands next to Sam, surprised at the sudden heat of the curved arm now. “Epic night, Mikey, epic, wished you were there the whole time. Jack got the waitresses into a wrestling competition, and that was just the first stop--”

“Gotta go,” Jack slurs from the door, with Daniel a slight guiding pressure on his arm. “Axe, the dinner for Admiral McKinney’s at seven, try to look like a respectable man of the U.S. armed forces for God’s sake.”

“I could out-dress you in a foxhole,” Sam answers serenely, “And have, O’Neill.”

“Harumph,” from Jack, making it a full word.

“Just jealous Navy’s got better uniforms than Air Force,” Sam loudly confides to Michael, still standing close.

Jack grunts a goodnight at that. Daniel gives Michael a significant look full of too many signifiers entirely.

Jack wavers on the step, considering. “Danny, you’re invited, you know, but it’ll mostly be a lot of old army hotheads pretending they have a chance in hell of drinking me and Axe here under the table.”

“Ha,” Sam snorts at that, instant friends again.

Daniel says, “No worries, Jack. Michael has already offered to show me more sights.”

“A whole bunch of things,” Michael pipes up, smilingly.

As they leave, Michael watches how Daniel does it, how he moves, how their final shared glance is happier than either of them had been before this night. Daniel helps Jack navigate the way, his hand on Jack’s forearm; his real goodnight for Michael is in the lift of a dark eyebrow only.

With Daniel turned and going out the door he may as well have been Victor leaving; and though he is not, he is more than enough for the best weekend of Michael Westen’s memory.  



End file.
